"Yes, but Walter Clyde is an ingenious fellow, and he saw how to get around that difficulty."
"But how—how?"
"Well, close beside the railroad was the stump of a great tree that had been cut down. I saw him point at it, and above the roar of the train I heard him shriek for me to lift my head and look at it."
"Yes, yes! Go on!"
"I saw him whirling the lasso-noose about his head, making ready for the cast, having first hitched the other ends to the cow-catcher of the locomotive."
"Well, well?"
"I lifted my head as high as possible, and I saw the noose shoot through the air. Excuse me while I shudder a few seconds!"
"Did he drag you from the track in time?" shouted the professor. "Did the noose fall over your head?"
"No," answered Frank; "but it fell over that stump, and, when the express reached the end of the lariat, having come so near that the nose of the pilot brushed my hair, the lariat brought up. It was a good stout rope, and it yanked that engine off the track in a second, and piled the entire train in the ditch. I was saved—saved by a brave boy, and only forty of the passengers on the train were killed."
Professor Scotch gasped for breath and sank from his chair to the floor.